http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,18911,00.html
Rosie Outlook for "The View"
by Joal Ryan
Apr 28, 2006, 7:45 AM PT
Rosie O'Donnell is the latest aftershock in the Katie Couric earthquake.
With Couric leaving NBC's Today to anchor CBS' Evening News, and Meredith Vieira leaving ABC's The View to replace Couric on Today, O'Donnell will leave her house to replace Vieira on The View.
Word of the O'Donnell hire leaked late Thursday and was first reported by Extra. The deal is expected formally announced on Friday morning's View.
O'Donnell will presumably start her new job in September, the same month Couric and Vieira are to start their new jobs.
O'Donnell is a "fat 43-year-old menopausal ex-talk show host," according to her somewhat-inaccurate blog bio. (She's actually 44.) She is better known as a stand-up comic turned character actress (Sleepless in Seattle, A League of Their Own) turned daytime TV queen.
From 1996-2002, as the Broadway-boosting, Tom Cruise-crushing star of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, O'Donnell won six Daytime Emmys as Outstanding Talk Host. In the late 1990s, Newsweek dubbed her the "Queen of Nice" for being a bright light in a murky sea of Sally Jessy Raphaels, Geraldos and Jerry Springerss.
O'Donnell vacated her desk job for the same reason she originally sought it out: To spend more time with family. She and partner Kelli Carpenter are parents to four children, one of whom Carpenter gave birth to in 2002. (O'Donnell gave her version of Ellen DeGeneres' "Yup, I'm gay" interview to ABC News in 2002.)
After her show ended, O'Donnell developed a reputation for being not nice. Much of the her image was fueled by a protracted legal battle over her defunct women's magazine, Rosie.
In recent years, O'Donnell has maintained a low profile, even while producing a Broadway flop, launching a cruise line for gay and lesbian families and venting about David Letterman's show others on her blog.
Just what we need - a Tom Cruise loving freak! I hope she and Star go round and round.
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